Down in the Salinas Valley

May 22, 2013

As the debate over immigration reform continues in Washington D.C., Need to Know offers an inside look at the lives of Latino farm workers. With the continuation of our “Main Street” series, correspondent John Larson reports from Salinas, California — home to John Steinbeck and some of the richest farmlands in the world.

Before he wrote his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck was commissioned by The San Francisco News to write a series of newspaper articles on the migrant laborers of the Salinas Valley.

Comments

I just watched “Down in Salinas Valley” from our PBS station. These families are an inspiration and a beautiful example of the human spirit. I hope our country can fix these immigration problems by replacing them with respect for humanity. We should recognize what is in our Declaration of Independence, the God given right to all mankind to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Imagine (Thank you John Lennon) all the people living with liberty and the ability to pursue their dreams. These people are trying. I wish them God’s blessing.

Eagle

Any person that comes to this country to be proactive, work and improve the social economic of this country is Welcome. I rather have a group of people that work hard everyday to improve their families than having people sitting around doing anything. I hope the best for them and I am very proud for those students that are working very hard to improve their family situation. Yeah we can do it!!!!! Thank you PBS for showing all the things that this beautiful culture has to go thru and all the benefits that we are getting from them.

rainbird

Loved the program. Been there, fone that, Hollister, Eatsonville, San Jose pre-silicon AND also have a second cousin (now retired) who wad white and one of the most exploitive ranchers sround-notorious

BL

Excuse me.. the migrant workers in the Grapes of Wrath were legal American Citizens….Many migrant workers are Illegals they drain our social services. I feel awful for them… Coe here legally. they only make $25,000 a year Oh Poor babies. Many of our seniors on Social Security make much less than that … Myself included at only $12,000 a year after years of working underpaid. So, do I feel bad for them? Not really!

MC

Do you purchase your vegetables at a supermarket? Do you purchase your fruits at the supermarket? I believe that they are working very hard and deserve to be treated as human beings. You can’t receive benefits unless you are a citizen.

Anonymous

Deport the illegals and give the legal immigrants increased wages.

Linda Stevens

In other words, some human beings are not equal to other human beings when there’s any question on who deserves fair and humane treatment? John Steinbeck didn’t ever mention whether every migrant farm worker was legally in the United States.. After having read four of his books, I strongly suspect that little detail was not of any particular importance to him.
There didn’t used to be, outside of the west and the southwest, much hostile talk about “illegal aliens” [insert the word Latinos] as their has been during the past twenty or so years. I’m sure some cynic will choose to believe I’m making up a tale to prove a point. That’s your issue and not mine. So anyway, when I was growing up there was a certain rental house about four blocks away from my parents’ house. Everyone knew various people would arrive at that house in a car with usually a Mexican license plate. They could speak little or no English. But within less than six months time they would learn enough English to get along and so forth. Then hose people would leave and others would arrive. It was discussed casually by some of their near neighbors but I never heard any anger or anything about them breaking the laws or taking advantage of the system. They simply didn’t see any of that activity as a threat.Basically it simply was as it was. It was nothing to do with the economy or any of that rubbish. Most of the people living nearest to that house were just working class and lower working class people. Politics have changed the public attitude to open hostility over what was innocuous in most of the United States. It might be a good idea to ask why.

Joseph

The so-called documentary was a slanted, bias, propaganda story to get sympathy for illegal aliens. Ilegals were always referred as “undocumented”. and the white rich man was blamed for the poverty of low-income Hispanics! Strangely there was no mention of the many successful, and professional legal immigrants. The rich white man is blamed for the economy and academic failure of Hispanics. I noticed a picture of a quincenera dressed in her expensive dress. These quincenera celebrations costs thousands of dollars, and these people cannot afford the basic needs? The Salinas story was an insult to viewersm, especially Hispanic viewers

Need to Know is a production of Creative News Group (CNG) in association with WNET. Marc Rosenwasser is Executive Producer. Need to Know is made possible by Bernard and Irene Schwartz, Mutual of America, Citi Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation, Margaret A. Cargill Foundation, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS.